The Chronos Plague (Book 1): No Time Left Read online

  “Before we even got to Prague. Looks like he was the first,” Conner said.

  “What did you say to the police after they told you? I would think they would want to really talk to you then,” I said.

  “Yeah, they got weird fast. We didn’t have much to say after that,” Conner said. “What’s our move?”

  “I want to see this Canada site. Might be able to put together what went on,” I said.

  “Let’s get going, then. It’s a long flight to Canada.”

  “Always is.”

  Chapter 5 – 7 Months ATEOTW

  The heavy pine trees rose like prison walls on either side of the dirt road I followed. I knew I was somewhere in the middle of a wildlife refuge, but I really wasn’t sure which one. I had ridden the boat as long I could have, and eventually had to ditch it. Realistically, I couldn’t take it any further than I did. Even if I had gone to the Atlantic and went up toward the Mississippi, I’d have run out of gas a long time ago. As it was, I probably gained days of travel thanks to the time I had used it. Jacksonville, Florida was a messed-up place. From the river, it looked like there were pockets of survivors, and they seemed to be fighting each other as much as they were fighting off the zombies. A couple of times, I had people want to catch a ride on my boat, and another time a guy stood on the shore with a rifle aimed at me demanding I give him my ride. I shot him in the head as a warning to anyone else who thought that robbing me might be a good idea. This also was what we had devolved into. Might makes right, or something like that. Good shots make right as far as I was concerned.

  The track was thin but I could still see it clearly. It was probably a service road or a fire lane used to fight fires during the dry seasons. It skirted around various ponds and lakes, and looked to go right through the heart of the refuge. I had actually stumbled on it by mistake, and it seemed like it was the best mistake I could have made. The brush was thick and nearly impassable in certain spots, giving me a very safe corridor to move through. I thought I could set up a tent near a stream that I crossed a mile back and be happy for a month. Every once in a while, I could hear an animal move through the brush away from me, and overhead were dozens of birds.

  The sun played interesting tricks with the shadows as the wind moved the treetops around. Every once in a while, I thought I caught movement through the trees, but I dismissed it as just shadows and animals.

  I stopped by a small stream that crossed the road, and decided to sit for a minute. I took out my canteen and took a long drink, then reached out to refill it. As I did, I looked upstream and froze with my hand out, the mouth of my canteen inches above the water.

  Twenty feet away, a small female zombie was looking at me curiously. She was about ten years old, wearing what looked like pajamas, and covered in blood from her chin to her knees. On the side of the stream was a dead deer, and three other zombies were still feeding on it, burying their faces in red gore.

  I put my canteen back and reached for the side of my pack. On one side, I had my survival shovel, which was a trenching tool of sorts, with a serrated edge on one side and a chopping blade on the other. The steel was really good, and it was heavy enough to cut small branches and trees, as well as cave in a zombie skull. It worked as a shovel sometimes, too.

  The other side of my pack held a very large knife. It was a double-edged dagger, blackened from pommel to tip. It looked like a medieval weapon of nightmares, and it functioned like one. I picked it up from the remnants of a Renaissance Faire. It came in a box labeled Cold Steel MAA Italian Dagger. Whatever it was, it was a hell of a zombie killer and it scared the locals something fierce.

  I pulled my knife and waited, watching the zombie child. The adults were always single-minded: see it, eat it. The kids were a little more random. Sometimes they went after you, sometimes they got distracted. The way this one was looking at me, I wasn’t certain she was going to go in another direction. If the universe was kind, she’d turn around and go back to the feeding group.

  She stepped forward, hesitated, then kept coming, her eyes focused on me. Her mouth hung open, and as she got closer, I could see the bite marks on her arms and neck that showed me how she got turned. I waited until she got close, and then lunged. The heavy blade easily pierced her skull through her eye socket, and she dropped without a sound. I ducked low and watched the other zombies, but they didn’t seem interested in anything that wasn’t bloody and in front of them at the moment.

  I slipped away down the path, thanking my stars that I didn’t grab water from that stream. The virus that turned people to zombies had a seventy-two-hour lifespan in water, depending on the temperature. Boiling it killed it instantly, but the reports I saw showed it could only survive in water that was between fifty and one hundred degrees. Above or below and it lost its integrity. I wasn’t in the mood to try and see if the stream was a safe temperature.

  I moved through the woods and stayed on the path, although I was much more alert that I had been before. I watched the trees and the grass, making sure I wiped off my blade completely. I kept it in my hand, not knowing if I was going to need it again.

  My rifle was suppressed, but that didn’t mean it was silent. I could shoot in here, but it would sound like I had loudly clapped my hands, attracting any nearby zombies. Not useful right now.

  Getting away from the feeding zombie, I moved quickly but quietly, and I started to see more movement as I went further north and west. When I looked close, I suddenly ducked again. I realized what I had done and I reached the conclusion that I would be better off shooting myself than keeping going. The service road I was on was actually between a couple of fire lanes, and walking in both of those fire lanes was about a hundred zombies, all headed in the same direction I was. I had managed to catch up to them and place myself square in the middle.

  I couldn’t go back, thanks to the small pack that was feeding, and I had no option on either side of me, so I decided to do the only thing that made sense. I kept down to the point where the brush kept me from seeing the zombies and I moved as fast as I could to try and get ahead of them. The whole time I was moving I kept muttering to myself.

  “Please don’t let the paths cross, please don’t let the paths cross.”

  It was a stupid thing to do, since the minute I opened my mouth I knew I was going to get the attention of karma, and she was never in a good mood. The path began veering oh-so-gently to the right, and I mentally cursed karma until I ran out of compound swear words and the list of made-up ones I saved for special occasions.

  I stopped ducking and figured the best play was the one that always worked with the zombies. Run like hell.

  I hit the trail fast and the swing of the road became more pronounced. My feet pounded through the grass and weeds that stretched out over the tracks like grasping hands. I passed through an opening in the trees and found myself on the fire break about fifty yards ahead of what I would consider a competent horde of zombies. They were shuffling forward with that weird walk of theirs and when they saw me burst out of the trees, it was like someone dropping a pizza on the coffee table and saying dinner’s here. The shuffling increased, and the slower ones were bumped aside for the faster ones who tried to get to the front.

  I didn’t waste time to introduce myself; I just set a pace and kept to it. I was jogging away and staying away. Every foot I put in front of me put a foot of distance behind me and the zombies that were on my tail.

  After a half hour of jogging, I slowed down and walked, regaining my breath and taking the time to assess the situation. I knew there was a road somewhere to the west, the track I was on was taking me to the north, which if I recalled from the map was a mess of woods. But, at least this way I had a trail to follow, and wasn’t trying to make my way through raw wilderness. I liked a hike as much as the next guy, but truth be known, I wasn’t all that woodsy.

  I went to take a drink and realized I hadn’t filled my canteen. I looked around for a source of water but there was nothing nearb
y. I couldn’t stand around and wait for it to rain, so I set out again at a slow jog. The zombies were still behind me somewhere, and every minute I delayed put them closer. One thing about them, they never stopped coming.

  As I moved north, I noticed the trees on either side of the fire break were getting closer and closer. In about twenty yards, I was going to be running through a very narrow corridor. That suited me. The zombies chasing me would have a harder time in that than where they currently were.

  I moved into the small opening and the effect was immediate. The sun was blocked, making this a dark run, and the trees were literally right next to the track. As I went in, I was curious as to how any vehicles traveling down this road managed to keep their side mirrors attached to their trucks. The vegetation was tall, the well-watered Georgian kind that smelled wet all the time. Humidity was more than a way of life down here, it was a relative that always showed up at family gatherings, drinking all the booze and eating all the cocktail wienies. You couldn’t get rid of it if you tried.

  I slowed to a walk, and allowed the darkness to claim me. Before it did, however, a zombie stepped out of the woods ahead of me. She was about five feet tall, probably in her twenties, slightly overweight with blonde hair and blue eyes. Your atypical Georgia Peach, if you were into that sort of thing. She looked at me for one second and then I slashed at her with the knife I was still holding.

  I had expected to lose the knife in her skull, getting it caught in the bone. I missed her head and hit her neck. That blade went through her flesh like it wasn’t there and neatly lopped off her head. She fell one way while her head fell another. I looked at my knife with renewed respect. I had no idea it could do that. Good to know. If I ever came across another one, I was definitely keeping it.

  I traveled through the woods and after a few turns here and there, I was very much turned around. I wasn’t paying very close attention to direction, and I think I was still moving north, but I might have been leaning west. I actually didn’t really care; I just knew I needed to keep moving. The sun was not going to stop marching across the sky because I needed it to. If I could find a secure place, I would stay there for the day. Right about now, I was missing that nice little boathouse I stayed in.

  The trees suddenly ended. It was a like someone flipped a switch. Suddenly, I went from dark to light. The sun opened up the landscape and before me lay a very interesting section of geography.

  The land was fairly normal, just a bunch of tall grass over a large flat area. The odd things were the trees. They were just sticks with tufts of leaves up near the top. There were other leaves here and there, but I couldn’t help but be reminded of the old story about the Lorax. I half expected a small fuzzy man with a big walrus mustache to jump out of a stump and start lecturing me about deforestation.

  I started through the grass when I suddenly stopped. There was a zombie on the ground, crawling as best it could through the thick, clinging vegetation. I could see its legs weren’t working, bent at odd angles at the knees. It saw me and tried to twist itself around to get at me. I stepped on its back and stabbed down with my big dagger. The needle point punched through its skull with barely any resistance. A quick twist to finish the job, and the zombie’s days were done. I was impressed again with my big blade.

  I walked forward and stopped again. This time, there were two zombies crawling through the grass, one a child, the other a woman. I was reminded of the mother and daughter I had rescued a few days back. I killed the two of them the same way I did for the other one, and as I wiped off their blood, my old training kicked in. Once a coincidence, twice a pattern, as my old mentor used to say. He also said three times and you’d better come up shooting.

  I moved very carefully forward and as it turned out, I was glad I had done so. I stepped up onto a small hill and looked down on about forty zombies, all of them crawling.

  “What the hell hit these guys?” I wondered aloud.

  I immediately wished I hadn’t done that. Every single one in the immediate vicinity turned, twisted, or twerked my way and I suddenly felt very popular. I killed the first one with my knife, and a second one the same way, but I was going to be overwhelmed if I tried to keep this up. I had a fleeting moment of regret for not grabbing some sort of sharp stick along the way, but I was here.

  I wiped the blade off and put it back, swinging my carbine around and making sure the suppressor was on tight. I regretted having to do this, but since I was in the middle of the damn woods, I guess I should stop being an old woman and kill some zombies.

  I shot two of them, listening as sound ba-wonged through the trees, then stepped forward, clearing a path. I didn’t need to kill them all, just the ones right in front of me. The rest could caterpillar themselves all over Georgia for all I cared. I cleared four more then the way opened up. I ran over the last two I killed and headed west. I was thinking I was going to be running through the woods a lot more when I suddenly skidded to a stop on a road that seemed to appear out of the grass. It ran north and south and looked a whole lot more attractive than hiking through the woods again. I was well aware that there was a sizable horde somewhere behind me. If I was lucky, and I rarely was, I could make it out of eyesight before they hit the tree line and saw their grounded friends.

  I went north, for no other reason than I happened to be facing that direction after my skid. I was trying to get north anyway, and I had to admit I was hoping to fare better than I did in Florida. I just needed some kind of ride. At this point, I’d take a kid’s Big Wheel.

  I ran north for a spell, then slowed to a steady jog, and then to a fast walk. My feet weren’t really happy with me, but they weren’t going to win the argument in this case. There was literally nowhere to go right now for a rest, and the fact that I had seen no one in these woods made me realize that the smarter natives were avoiding this particular stretch of geography for a reason.

  The road was uneventful, just running toward the horizon. I don’t mean that in the figurative sense; it literally ran straight away from me until I couldn’t see it any more. Spindly trees lined the road, while the grass reached out over the asphalt in a futile attempt to reclaim its former domain. I didn’t walk in the grass like I normally would, just because I did not trust that there wouldn’t be any more broken-legged zombies.

  About a mile up the road, it suddenly split in two. The two roads seemed to be going in the same direction, just separated by a small grove of trees. It was called Residents Road, and I could see several houses and residences placed in the trees. I took a minute to think about it, and against my better judgment, I decided to walk down the road with the residences. I had enough ammo to deal with families in each one, so that wasn’t my concern. But my supplies weren’t where I wanted them to be so I figured I’d take a look around.

  The first house was empty, cleared out of most things of value, including food. The second looked like someone had gone through it with either a tornado or a leashed cat. I wasn’t going to waste time trying to find anything in that mess.

  The third house was a trailer, and I did find an old .45 in a shoebox in the closet. I took the rounds of the magazine, but left the gun. I didn’t need another one and the weight wasn’t even worth the possibility of trading it.

  The next house was a little better. I found a few packets of oatmeal and some weird packets of tuna. The tuna hadn’t expired yet so I took it on faith. I also found a full roll of toilet paper. I found a gallon-sized plastic bag to put it in and I placed it carefully in my pack. It was the little things that I found I missed the most. Good toilet paper, a meal any time of the day, and not trying to keep from being killed every hour. Sentimental me.

  The last house was occupied, but they were neither alive nor moving dead. They were just dead in their armchair. First glance looked like a murder, but then I saw the needle tracks in his arm and the pile of drug crap on the table. Looks like this one went out on his terms. I left the house without bothering anything. It wasn’t worth my t
ime.

  The row of houses ended as quickly as they had started and forty yards later, the Residential Road rejoined the other. For the life of me, I couldn’t see the point, and I couldn’t see why in the hell anyone would live in these woods. I mean, sure, for the apocalypse, but when was that a sure reason to build a house?

  I continued on and as I did, I began to get the distinct smell of water in the air. Somewhere nearby was a decent body of water, and I might be able to find a boat if I was lucky enough. But I would settle for anything that kept me from walking at this point.

  I rounded a long turn in the road and a long building came into view. There was a small parking lot next to it so I figured it to be a public building of some kind. Behind the building was a small marina, and there were three pontoon boats still tied up at their moorings. The marina ran the length of the building on the far side, and the windows were tinted so I couldn’t see what was inside.

  I decided to approach the building on the parking lot side, just so I had a much further distance of retreat if I needed it. The door was a simple glass door with a deadbolt on it for security. The lock was easily bypassed, as they were never meant to keep out anyone who really wanted to get in.

  Inside was a small reception area, and huge map of the forest preserve dominated the area behind the desk. I spent a few minutes looking at the map trying to get oriented, and when I did, I wasn’t very happy. As it turns out, I needed to go south on the road and instead I went north. The only way I was going to gain any ground whatsoever was to take one of the boats and follow the canal. If the motors didn’t start, I was going to have to Huck Finn it along.

  On the other side of the wall was a small bait and tackle shop, followed by a café of sorts. The last portion of the building was a lounge area that came complete with a bar and what seemed to be a sleeping drunk.